Health At Every Size HAES ®

Health At Every Size - or HAES® (pronounced haze) -is a movement. It asserts that the best way to be healthy is to stop worrying about your body fat percentage and start caring about the food you eat and the life you live.

Officially, HAES® is an approach to wellbeing that maintains that body weight is a poor determinant of health. Rather than idealising a goal weight to be achieved by weight reduction strategies, HAES® promotes the practice of behaviours that support health.

At its core, HAES® is wise, holistic, humanistic, evidence-based and is highly compatible with Attuned, Intuitive or Mindful Eatingpractices. it forms the foundation for thenon-diet approach.

Casey has worked in the HAES® paradigm for nearly four years. She is continually humbled by the positive effect that this has on her client's lives and sense of wellbeing. On a personal level this approach gave her the tools and confidence to end her own restrictive dieting patterns and create a loving relationship with food and her body.

WHAT are the key principles of HAES ® ?

The HAES® movement is about spreading awareness of the true ambiguityin the medical literature about body fatness, and about recommending a healthy diet and lifestyle no matter someone’s size. For HAES®, the recommendation for everyone is eat well, de-stress, and live well. Love yourself.

Promoting individually appropriate, enjoyable, life-enhancing physical activity, rather than exercise that is focused on a goal of weight loss

These principles were updated in 2014 to incorporate broader aspects of social justice and to appreciate the sociocultural and political determinants of health. For a more comprehensive appreciation of the current thinking in HAES® click here.​

WHY IS HAES ® IMPORTANT?

As weight loss dieting has become the cultural norm we have seen the incidence of eating disorders in the community increase at alarming rates. Whilst the development of disordered eating is complex and multi-factorial there is strong consensus amongst eating disorder professionals that the widespread use of dieting in the community is a causal part of this increasing trend.​HAES® is an extremely important foundational philosophy for the promotion of health that simultaneously works to prevent the development of disordered eating. In our current cultural climate steeped in the thin ideal, HAES® offers a much needed circuit breaker that promotes health without endorsing weight loss dieting.​The HAES® approach is especially vital for dietitians who provide advice for clients with weight concern. HAES® forms the philosophical backdrop for many dietitians who use a non-diet approach to weight management. The important influence of HAES® in ethical and evidence-based Dietetic practice was recently acknowledged in the Journal of The American Dietetic Association:

If you are interested in reading more about HAES® visit healthateverysizeblog.org, this is a must-read, feel-good blog. This Blogreceives monthly contributions from invited experts in health promotion and social justice, including Australia's own Dr Rick Kausman, author of If Not Dieting Then What?​Health At Every Size® and HAES® are Registered Trademarks of ASDAH and are used with Permission.​

Losing weight isn’t what makes people healthier; ​healthier living does.